How to know what content one need, and how to produce it, and what quantity, quality and how do I know what I need? I mean it might be quite easy to create many of the needed props and there is most certainly props you can be sure you will need. But you'll still need to figure out what you need, and what I am getting at is that you need to know what you are building beforehand, then plan what props are needed and then you can start creating.
I find this to be a bit of a catch-22 as it would help tremendously to have a props-library with the correct look and feel to build levels, but on the other hand to know how to build the props you need to know how the level will look and feel. So one option is of course to build the level and refine the props and adept the level, and this is actually quite close to (not to say exactly) how I prefer to do it. Other options might be to just start out making some props that you know you can make use of and go from that end.
It comes back to the way I like working with projects the "make a complete game then refine till done" approach. So this means do no props at all to start with even if it is (and to me it always is!) to start with. I mean the look and feel you really want concept-art to get any way. And concept art at this stage is a great thing, but it is not a deal breaker to not have all the concepts clear. I would now like to focus on level design. It depends on a lot of factors of course the games I focus on at the moment put importance into level design and it is reasonable to focus on level creation. In other scenarios it is less important, depends on the game.
So I would go on and create as much as possible with simple geometry. This in itself is an art form and it's super difficult to not feel compelled to start edging out the roughs and getting detail in. But it's kind of important to keep it in your head, or in your vision for now as progress is more important! When the rough design of the level is created it is time to start with props and make reality of the vision. You can already kind of play your level and you will have a good feel of how your vision fit into the design you've made and this way you already know what props you will need (or at least most of them, and most of them is enough).
Since you already have all the game play in place the next steps will be in creating and molding the visuals and of course expect some tweaking until finished, and here finished is really up to you yourself, as you are already done before you start.
I like to take a level from Super Mario as an example, or even better the Captain toad levels of New super Mario 3d Land (I think is the name). The Captain Toad levels are really limited and will have a set number of elements to work with. If you decide first what to do in the level, and the steps to clear it, it is easy enough to build the level with that, form there it is easy enough to build a working version of the level with simple geometry and from there it is again a simple task to replace graphics to land in the right look and feel.
The reason I thought about this now is because I just finished up the level implementations for Smelly memories and while I've been keeping busy doing this my associate have been keeping busy animating (the games graphics is made from built dolls and stop-motion animation so there is a lot of work going into that). So first she would put together a sketch of a level, in a step by step manner, draw it with simple graphics and we then break up the graphics and build the level. And now all the levels are done with the functionality and sketches so we'll be hard at work soon enough to replace the graphics and create game-animation and so forth but it is a huge milestone really, and the way we've worked is the reason it will be finished.
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